(GILBERT, AZ.) – Vice Mayor Chuck Bongiovanni is running for a second term on the town council in 2026, with general elections to take place in November of this year.
Bongiovanni was elected to the council in 2022, then named Vice Mayor in the town’s annual selection for the seat in January of this year.
Photo Credit: Town of Gilbert
In an interview with OpGov.news reporter Teri Tracy at Zinburger in Downtown Gilbert, Bongiovanni expresses his hopes and goals for the town. He talks about water, budget drawbacks, and what he feels Gilbert should look like going forward.
Bongiovanni thinks that Gilbert, ideally, will have a small-town feel with a larger population.
“When you go to some east side cities, people don’t know each other; people aren’t friendly, and I don’t see that happening in Gilbert, which is really cool. We have our own little culture by itself.”
“Yes, we’re probably going to grow about 30,000 people max in the next eight years or so,” he says of anticipated growth, “so it’s not going to be half a million people like sometimes people think it’s going to be.”
He iterates further on what he hopes will come of the community, speaking on the historical communication styles of local government and how he hopes to continue to change that.
“I really hope that we can build on the trust between us and local government leadership, but I think that’s more of a nationalized problem, and not just here.”
Jumping into the town’s long-standing water crisis and its many facets and issues, Bongiovanni opens up about how he feels the town and its residents are viewing the same problem.
“If [a higher power] came down and down and did our water audit, 50 percent of the people would still say he or she is lying. I think we’re very divided more in an emotional sense than a reality sense,” he shares.
“... I think it gets dangerous when people start taking sides and thinking they’re part of a team, and they can't even speak to someone on the other team.”
Bongiovanni says that's where he thinks ”we get it wrong”, referencing the symbiosis between government and population, but states that he thinks most people are somewhere in the middle politically as opposed to being an extremist on either side of the primary political spectrum.
In a previous interview, Bongiovanni spoke about the heated debate surrounding water issues, particularly when it pertains to the water budget versus the rising water rates in Gilbert.
While Bongiovanni has spoken about the perceived miscommunication between residents and the council in the past and these factors colliding, it seems as though there’s been little to change his perspective on the matter.
“Its been a tough four years. ...Of course I believe their concerns need to be heard, but where I think we fail is the educational part; bringing them along with us so they fully understand an issue.
On a more positive note, Bongiovanni says that, “I've found that most people who I explain things to understand what the issues are, and then their feedback means more to me because I know they understand the issue.”
The logic is sound, but the execution? Not so much.
“I think most residents think our Gilbert budget is like a household budget: if you need money for something, you just take away the Starbucks for a while,” he states, “that’s just not true. It’s money that cannot be mixed. We just need to do a better job in communicating that; to me that isn't transparency, that's education.”
Communication may be a great quality for a member of the council, but OpGov.news likes to get to know candidates as who they are beyond their campaigns.
The next question? Whether Bongiovanni has ever faced imposter syndrome during his time on the council or in any other role he’s held during his career.
“Probably the first three months,” he responds, “it takes eight months to completely understand what’s going on.”
It would seem as though this sensation was temporary for Bongiovanni, and he’s feeling more confident this term than he was at the start of his current term.
“I think it’s easiest to have imposter syndrome when you run for office the first time. You think you can make all these changes, and then you realize once you get elected that you can’t make those changes.”
“As a leader, you can never say you’ve never had imposter syndrome, but I'm very comfortable in a leadership role; not everyone agrees with my leadership style, but it’s made some companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars,” he states.
According to Bongiovanni, what keeps him up at night the most is his worry that residents don’t understand all of Gilbert’s issues well enough to understand why he votes a certain way on varying decisions.
Citing his previous training as a social worker and systems expert, Bongiovanni is apprehensive of how to educate the entire population of Gilbert when most decisions take so long to even present options.
“You can’t make one decision without it affecting something else. So, a vote that we have today, we’re not only thinking about today, we're thinking about 20 years from now.”
He states that while residents are not always with the council as they deliberate on decisions such as water rates, trying to communicate the council’s decisions without getting frustrated is difficult.
Bongiovanni believes that many of the answers the Town of Gilbert is looking for does occupy the minds of its residents, those ideas can’t be validated without the resident having all of the information pertaining to a certain issue.
When asked about his favorite aspect of Gilbert as a resident, Bogiovanni loves knowing that if he needs help, he simply just has to ask. His pride lies in the tight-knit community here, as opposed to upstate New York, where he grew up.
He says that meeting the people he’s met over the past four years since his election has been a privilege.
To add to or correct any information in this story, please contact me at tracy.t@lead4earth.org and be sure to leave a comment with your thoughts below!
Comments